RT Article
T1 The Appearance of Saints: Photographic Evidence and Religious Minorities in the Secret Police Archives in Eastern Europe
JF Material religion
VO 15
IS 1
SP 82
OP 109
A1 Kapaló, James 1968-
LA English
PB Taylor & Francis
YR 2019
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1666532304
AB I present here examples of the photographic presence of a religious minority community in the secret police archives in ex-communist Eastern Europe. The use of secret police archives by researchers to trace the history of repression and collaboration and to understand the methods employed by totalitarian regimes to control their populations is well established. The significance of these archives for the study of material religion, however, has been largely overlooked by scholars. The secret police archives in Romania and the Republic of Moldova constitute a hidden repository of confiscated religious materials and photographs which often sit alongside photographic images created by the secret police in the course of their investigations into "criminal" religious activities. These archives, therefore, represent an important resource for understanding both how religious groups chose to represent themselves, and how the totalitarian system created images of religious "others" in order to incriminate them and to produce anti-religious propaganda. In this paper, through the presentation of example cases from state security files, I discuss the dual character of the photographic traces of communities in the archives as both religious justification and incrimination, and suggest ways of approaching these images through their materiality in the context of contemporary post-communist society.
K1 Moldova
K1 Romania
K1 Archives
K1 Photography
K1 Religion
K1 Religious Minorities
K1 secret police
DO 10.1080/17432200.2019.1570445